Saturday night thriller it wasn’t as the Reds limp to a point at the Palace
Crystal Palace 0 Liverpool 0, 25th February 2023.
Crystal Palace 0 Liverpool 0, 25th February 2023.
Watching the Reds insipid and rather dreadful 0–0 draw last evening with Crystal Palace was my third game of football on a Saturday that culminated with a late evening into a long early Sunday morning of Test Match cricket from New Zealand so all in all, I’ve had worse sporting days with the distraction of the bread and circus of life. I began with the early game and the battle at Goodison Park with an eventually triumphant Aston Villa deservedly taking all 3 Premier League points from an Everton team destined once more to pray that another team will finish this season poorer than they. It’s clear that, in footballing parlance, both Bournemouth and Southampton are “gone for all money” and destined for the dreaded drop into The Championship and arguably the toughest league from which to escape back from in a positive direction. Aston Villa’s Merseyside win sees them climb to exactly mid-table with 31 points and a couple of further wins from assured safety and with Leeds United defeating a doomed Southampton and West Ham thumping Nottingham Forest 4–0, the Blues of Everton are once more in the relegation zone and in a fight with six other teams to decide who joins the south coast “Saints” and “Cherries”.
My second game of the day saw those overachieving yet seemingly relegation bound Cherries of Bournemouth take a 4–1 pounding from defending champions Manchester City amid a masterclass of midfield mastery from old and young, ancient and modern and German international Ilkay Gundogan and England under 18 starlet Rico Lewis. 14 years separate the grizzled bearded veteran and the frizzled mop top of youth from Bury. Lewis, as you’ll be unsurprised to hear considering he’s playing for Pep Guardiola and Manchester City, looks a damn fine player indeed with time aplenty on the ball, a cool head for one so young and not afraid to get down and dirty with a crucial tackle. Should the kid continue to hold down a regular place for the English champions I can’t see it taking too long for him to force a place in the older aged national under 21 team (should that still exist) if not the senior team. He just looks a Spanish type “pivote” player and with the luck and good grace to avoid injuries, will flourish and bloom under Guardiola.
The cricket? Oh what a treat! Tea, chocolate biscuits and with the lights out and wrapped with a hot water bottle for company to beat away the coldness of a bitter winter’s night, New Zealand, under the swashbuckling skills of their captain Tim Southee, crashed and banged their way back into a Test Match they were seemingly well and truly out of. Southee, a bowling all-rounder, batted his way to an astounding 73 runs in double quick time thus ensuring his team had a fighting chance in a Test Match that, by the end of the day, though they were still behind an epoch defining England team amid a cricketing revolution, are still competitive, with more than a mere punchers chance, still very much in a game with two days still to play, and with a whole host of twists and cricketing turns still to come. I’m predicting a close run England victory in the middle of the afternoon of the fifth and final day, perhaps by 4 or 5 wickets, but my predictions aren’t worth the paper they’re not written on and I wouldn’t believe a word I say.
I certainly don’t.
The Liverpool game, I hear you cry? Bloody dreadful.
The opening fifteen minutes last evening at Selhurst Park was a mess of error strewn chaotic mistakes amid an emptiness that rivalled the final fifteen minutes whereby nothing of any noteworthy substance happened. The away end (strictly speaking the away “side” at Selhurst Park) urged on our heroes in all silvery white but there was very little coming in the way of inspirational football. From either team in all honesty. Crystal Palace seemed happy with the clean sheet and a point nearer safety. Liverpool just ran out of ideas. The woodwork and frame of both goals were hit three times, first by the sharper and fitter looking Diogo Jota from an impossible angle, the second by Jean-Philippe Mateta when he should have scored just before half-time and then Mo Salah when he was unluckily denied by the underside of the crossbar seconds after half-time. From the 52nd minute onward and the awarding of the game’s first corner to Liverpool, I penned not a single further word of footballing note.
This game was surely destined for the ignominy of the final slot on “Match of the Day”.
Instead, I mused that poor old Naby Keita shouldn’t be anywhere near this Liverpool team and that he is speaks volumes for the state of a team that were on the precipice of unparalleled, unbeatable glory just months ago. I mused too that if you squinted your eyes really tightly together you could almost visualise the red and blue of Crystal Palace being the ghosts of Barcelona playing the ghostly all whites of Real Madrid, those recent victors of 5 goals to 2 in a soon to be forgotten footballing past of recent times.
This was no Saturday night classic from London or from Spain’s far foreign land either.
I also calculated that, to the best of my failing memory and the football record books stored in my tiny mind, I’d been to Selhurst Park ten times in my football travelling days, but not for two decades (if you wanted to feel old) and not since a glorious April day in the year 2000 when I, and 26,101 other mostly Liverpool Red fans crammed inside this old south London stadium, bore witness to Emile Ivanhoe Heskey scoring a brace in a 2–1 win.
Against Wimbledon!
Ten times I’ve been to Selhurst Park and I’ve rarely watched the team I favour play the actual hosts, Crystal Palace. I went twice in my ragged youth days to see my hometown team of Portsmouth get beaten at the fag of a promotional season that this defeat ended the hopes of, but of the other 8 times I can only vouch for and recollect 3 games with Crystal Palace (one a triumph in a League Cup semi-final) but all of the remaining trips resulted in watching their ground sharing neighbours from Wimbledon.
And if you think things are dire now my fellow Reds: How about a stale, cold, misty and boring 0–0 draw with a dreadful Wimbledon when all we could do was join in with the schoolchildren in the stand opposite (in an otherwise largely empty stadium) as they chanted “Come on Liverpool! Come on Liverpool!” to beat away the boredom, or perhaps that freezing December night in 1993 when only 11,342 other hardy souls joined me, stood in the away end of Selhurst Park, to bear witness to the “Crazy Gang” of Wimbledon sending the Reds out of the League Cup in a penalty shoot-out? Or how about an eleventh visit to the Palace, this time an early May visit when a certain Michael Owen sprang from the substitutes bench in a 2–1 defeat that ended the dreams once more of winning the Premier League when even Saint Michael couldn’t rescue us?
I wouldn’t know.
I was locked out of that one!
So I watched the Reds demise in a local pub and caught the train back home.
Anyway, grab some perspective, worse things happen at sea.
And you could always join me and watch the cricket instead.
See you next time.
Thanks for reading. There is a wealth of past and present articles on Liverpool FC within my library here or alternatively, here are my three most recently published articles from this season:
Magnifico Los Blancos barrer a un lado Los Rojos
Liverpool 2 Real Madrid 5, 21st February 2023.medium.com
The crazy chaos of the Premier League! But the Reds grab all 3 points
Newcastle United 0 Liverpool 2, 18th February 2023.medium.com
Derby delight for Liverpool as the Reds drop the Blues
Liverpool 2 Everton 0, 13th February 2023.medium.com